Air Force moves to open combat jobs to women

1of2From left, members of the Air Force Fitness Testing and Standards Unit, SrA Tequina Fernandez, Dr. Neal Baumgartner, Sgt. Ron Davis, Lt. Colonel Ryan Logan, and SSgt. James Hollingsworth watch a special operations volunteer carry a dummy during a testing session for a new set of gender neutral physical standards for specific operational commands in the Air Force at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio on Wednesday, April 22, 2015. Dr. Neal Baumgartner, a former Air Force Major, along with the Air Force Fitness Testing and Standards Unit is developing a new set of physical requirements for Airmen that will be based on the tasks that they must be able perform in their posts. The program will aim to include a large percentage of women after the 2013 announcement that the Air Force would open six previously closed career fields to female applicants. The Air Force currently has ninety-nine percent of their career fields open to both men and women. The remaining fields are in ground combat and special operations.Photo: Matthew Busch, photojournalist

2of2﻿Neal Baumgartner, ﻿﻿left, ﻿﻿is developing a new set of physical requirements for airmen and women that will be based on the tasks they must be able to perform in specific operational commands in their posts. ﻿Photo: Matthew Busch, photojournalist

The Air Force said Wednesday it has launched a study at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland that will pave the way for the first women to serve in a half-dozen critical battlefield specialties previously open only to men.

Billed as a scientific approach to fitness guidelines, the study is part of a transformational step for a military that has long been dominated by men, especially in combat roles.

The Pentagon has ordered the services to open once-closed jobs to women and left each branch the task of setting standards to facilitate the new policy.

'Physical success'

Over the next few months, Lackland will help create the physical training regimen for the Air Force.

"I want to come up with the best fitness test possible for our Air Force airmen in these specific career fields to best predict their physical success operationally by occupation, by career," said Neal Baumgartner, who heads the Air Force's Physical Testing and Standards Unit. "If you do this process right - and our colleagues in some of the other services are doing it right as well - then you will be gender-neutral by default."

The Pentagon order will affect far fewer people in the Air Force - where 19 percent of 307,377 active-duty airmen are female - than the Army and Marine Corps when it is expected to take effect in late June 2016.

The Army and Marines are working to open a larger number of occupational specialties to women, while the Air Force already has allowed them to serve in but six special operations career fields.

Those fields are among the most dangerous and physically challenging in the Air Force. Special tactics and combat rescue is closed to women officers, while special operations weather, combat control, para-rescue and tactical air control party are closed to female enlistees.

Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered the military in 2013 to open combat jobs to women, saying "we are making our military stronger, and we are making America stronger."

Brig. Gen. Brian Kelly, director of Air Force military force management policy, said the effort was "not about raising or lowering occupational standards."

'Equal but lower'

But an ardent foe of the change pointed to the failure of 29 women to pass the Marine's infantry officer course since 2012 as proof that the new policy would erode readiness in combat units.

"The process described will not retain necessary high standards in Special Operations Forces training," said Elaine Donnelly, president of the nonprofit Center for Military Readiness, a conservative group that opposes the decision. "It will 'validate' and re-define 'gender-neutral' standards that are equal but lower than before."

A retired Army major who developed the Air Force's current physical tests, Baumgartner has studied the issue for years, starting with a paper he wrote in 1998. He believes it is possible to develop "occupationally specific, operationally relevant, gender-neutral" physical fitness test standards linked to the tasks of each job.

Testing at Lackland began last week. Baumgartner's team now has 17 men and one woman performing tests, but needs more volunteers from San Antonio-area bases. He hopes to soon have around 200 airmen - divided evenly between men and women - involved in the tests.

'Data will drive it'

During a training test Wednesday, an airman wearing a bulletproof vest and rucksack totaling 80 pounds carried a 200-pound dummy over his shoulders at Lackland's Medina Annex.

Running at a trot, he ran 54 yards and placed it on a table, ran more than 100 yards and then returned for the dummy. He sat down and took long, deep breaths before preparing to pull a 95-pound portable sled.

A few minutes later, another airman carried the dummy over his shoulder, repeating the drill as Baumgartner ran at his side, a digital stopwatch swinging from a lanyard. When it was done, more numbers filled a form on his clipboard.

Just what physical training tasks ultimately will result from the tests isn't clear.

"The data will drive it," Baumgartner said. "That's what the beauty of this is. It's very objective."